UPI transaction volume hits 76.8 million in October

UPI is a payments system launched by NPCI that facilitates instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on a mobile platform, without requiring any details of the beneficiary’s bank account. Photo: iStockphoto

New Delhi: Transactions across the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) touched a new peak in October.

The transaction volume was 76.8 million, up 150% from 30.8 million in the previous month, figures released by National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) on Thursday showed.

The value of transactions rose around 33% to Rs7,057 crore in October from Rs5,293 crore in September.

In the last one year, the UPI transaction volume has risen more than 700 times, NPCI data showed.

UPI is a payments system launched by NPCI that facilitates instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on a mobile platform, without requiring any details of the beneficiary’s bank account.

NPCI is the umbrella organization for all retail payments in the country.

Transactions through UPI received a major stimulus from the government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Bhim (Bharat Interface for Money) app on 30 December.

Until now, there have been more than 19 million downloads of the Bhim app on Android platform and around 1 million downloads on iOS platform.

According to NPCI, around 7.6 million transactions have taken place on the Bhim app in October.

The value of transactions on Bhim recorded for October is around Rs2348.7crore i.e. around 33% of the total value of UPI transactions recorded in October.

Most banks have renamed their UPI apps as Bhim (bank name) app. For instance, the UPI app for State Bank of India (SBI) has been renamed as Bhim SBI Pay. Similarly, other bank apps have too been renamed.

UPI was launched in August 2016 with 21 banks, and is currently being offered by about 59 banks.

An upgraded version of UPI is expected to be launched soon.

“We have received phenomenal feedback from customers on the newly introduced UPI feature on Airtel Payments Bank platform and have seen a significant surge in transactions. UPI offers our customers the convenience of quick and seamless digital money transfers without the hassle of furnishing additional bank details. With more customers moving to UPI platform, we see this soon becoming one of the most preferred modes of payment in India,” Shashi Arora, MD and CEO, Airtel Payments Bank said.